Military

Further Reading

Ho dynasty 1400-1407

In 1400 General Ho Quy-ly [Ho Qui Ly] seized the throne and proclaimed himself founder of the short-lived Ho dynasty (1400-07). An ambitious regent, he instituted a number of reforms that were unpopular with the feudal landlords, including a limit on the amount of land a family could hold and the rental of excess land by the state to landless peasants; proclamations printed in Vietnamese, rather than Chinese; and free schools in provincial capitals. Threatened by the reforms, some of the landowners appealed to China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to intervene.

Using reinstatement of the Tran dynasty as an excuse, the the Ming dynasty (1368-1662) took advantage of the situation to usurp the throne, thereby giving of China the occasion to intervene on the pretext of restoring the Tran dynasty. Within a year of the Chinese invasion in 1406, Dai-Viet was again a province of China. Under the Ming the country was heavily exploited, and radical measures were instituted to Sinicize the Vietnamese. Within little more than a decade, oppression had brought into being a powerful movement of national resistance.

Trung-quang-de (grandson of Nghe-tong), the last king of the Tran family was taken prisoner by the troops of the emperor of China. While they were carrying him off in 1409, he threw himself into a river. The kindom of Tongking was now for fourteen years subject to China. Loi, a descendant of the kings of the Ly family, collected an army in 1418, and attacked the Chinese. After a war of ten years he expelled them, and reestablished the dynasty of Ly.